Everyone has gone home, husband is sleeping, the house is dark and cold but in one corner of my room, a blue light flickers, reminding me that there is still battery life on my laptop.
I grab one of my flat Cost Co. two-for-ten-bucks pillows and try to bring it back to life. If you pile up about ten of these discount pillows, you can almost get comfortable. At this time in my life, I had expected that down-filled pillows with 600 thread count cases would be at the head of my bed, but no, this recent downturn in the economy has dashed that frivolous dream. I'll probably be laid out in a coffin purchased with an American Express card at Cost Co. And for eternity, my head will rest on 10 or 11 flat-as-a-board-hard-as-a- rock pillows and no matter how hard the mortuary that has prepared me for my eternal sleep tries to make me look as good as a dead woman can look, I'll have an unmistakable pissed off look because I never got a down-filled pillow.

I struggle to find a comfortable place in bed regret that I didn't unplug that damned lap top computer. The blue light seems to grow brighter as my sleepless night grows later. Wordlessly it beckons me. "Get your ass outta bed, submit to me." I knew that crops were rotting in my Farm Town game. Gold lay ungathered in my Fairyland application. And God knows that my "lil' Green Patch" need to be examined.

The thing is, I take Xanex to sleep and sometimes instead of sleeping, I find myself sitting there in bed, a bowl of microwaved canned corn with butter sitting on the night stand and my lap top logged into my Face Book account. I didn't do it. My unconcious personality did it. She made the corn and put all that salt and butter on it. I tried to stop her, warning her that Oprah said the worst thing you can do is to eat at night. If I'd only hung on for another hour, it would have been midnight, officially the next day, with emphasis on "day". The corn could have been consummed without guilt.

The lap top is now in my bed and I am logged on. I have created a personality online that is interesting, friendly and approachable and for this I am proud. Who wouldn't want to virtually hang out with this photoshop enchanced beauty. I am amazing at 57, appearing half my age and half my weight. In my life, on Face book at least, I have accomplished so many things that it's hard to believe that I'm only one person. But we all know that our Facebook profile might be enhanced a bit, embellished to portray a woman who fears nothing, lives beyond society's boundaries and appears to have it going on.

In truth, I'm a woman who opens cans of corn late at night just because she needs a vehicle to carry butter. And salt. I'm a woman with flat pillows and boxed bras. Common. That's me. Common - at best.

But my Facebook friends see me as a super hero. Or an idiot but at least they see me. They actually "see" me, unlike the people in my real life, who only see me when they have to. When I reach a point where my invisable status in this world, has reached a limit. When a person reaches a certain age, they are often discarded or at the very least, discounted and deemed to be uninteresting. Their stories have been told too many times. Sadly, those tired old stories illustrate an entire life. Good times. Yup, good times. And some bad times. Times that have left scars that those close to us don't want to look at anymore.

And so, on Facebook, we are all superstars. Writers, artists, mothers, people with lives that are so colorful they go beyond the written word.

I have never blogged before. Don't know that I'll blog again. But for now, I feel like I have an audience of friends who know exactly what I'm saying. Or as they read, maybe they earn a fear that life could hold for them exactly what it holds for me. A life that is created with thoughts and dreams, some unfullfilled but holding a promise that there's always tomorrow and corn with butter late at night happens to the best of us.